I was the first and last person who will treat you like conquered land
by xshedreamsinredx
Summary: Ranbir Kapoor/Deepika Padukone. Real Life Pairing. You can tell stories about me to your kids, when you want them to know about the wrong people to love.


**Characters:** Ranbir Kapoor/Deepika Padukone  
**Fandom:** Real life pairing  
**Warnings:** Rated T for crude language usage and some sexual references.  
**Dedications: **written for Doramarathon on lj.  
**Standard disclaimer applied.**

* * *

**I was the first and last person  
who will treat you like conquered land  
**

_"Sometimes,  
I can hear my bones straining  
under the weight of all the lives  
I'm not living."_

_._

_._

_._

_It's not love._

He knows she knows. The fact just stares her in the face every morning he leaves her alone in bed, every day he doesn't bother answering her calls, every time he doesn't know how to craft an apology from anything other than his hands.

"You were too much in love." He says, even as he sees her wipe angry tears against the back of her hand. The mascara bleeds on to her cheeks.

He wants to be sorry. "It had to end badly."

.

.

.

Days, months, years later she will repeat those words in front of an entire nation, trace them back from a hollow memory and it won't mean a thing. That will be old.

But then, she will smile like she is in love, dodge questions with the tact of a five year old, turn her head away to hide the colour blooming on her cheeks every time his name is not the one mentioned and it will mean something he wouldn't know.

That will be _new_.

.

.

.

"Why don't you understand that if I stay here for two more minutes I will-"

He leans in. "You will what?"

Tears well up in her eyes and for a moment he forgets that there are hundreds of cameras focusing in on his face, the buzz on the set fades into the sound of blood rushing to his head. And, fuck. He should have thought it through before he tried to pull it through in one piece.

"I'll fall in love with you once again." Naina says but she sounds so much, _too much_, like Deepika. A lone tear slips down her cheek, she wipes it hastily, shakes her head in vehemence. "And you won't. Once again."

Ayan cuts the scene and demands a repeat because he'd forgotten to address the character by name in that one shot. He doesn't really mind. Acting is acting. It doesn't mean a thing.

(Once they are done with the filming, he will sit in front of the computer screen and watch the scene play over and over again. He will not know why, but it won't mean a thing either.)

.

.

.

Katrina is different, she is easy and sorted.

She leaves him alone in the morning before he can get a chance to, doesn't bother to pick up his calls before the third ring, thinks of apologies as nothing but empty words, stops him short whenever he tries to force one past his lips.

He thinks he might just be a little in love with her.

(Never too much, though. That's the rule and that's the game. The only chance one has at surviving these things is always loving people in a measure that runs a bit short of enough.)

.

.

.

She never once believed in the rules, never once believed it could have just been a game, never even considered the notion in her dreams. She loved too hard, too fiercely. She was more about feelings and expressions and declarations. God, she was a ticking bomb, a self-destructive force working at her own pace.

She managed to twist his world out of its axis with the fall of her every step and he didn't, _couldn't_, allow her to walk away from it unmarked.

It was a part of the rule, too.

.

.

.

He sees the picture on the front page of the morning newspaper and tosses it out of the window for no reason other than he can.

.

.

.

"I meant to tell you…"

"It's not been that long…"

"You know how these things are…"

"It will probably crash and burn…"

"He makes me laugh…"

He breathes out slowly, forcefully. Lets her words settle down around him like piles of ashes before biting out a rushed 'okay.'

"Okay." She echoes.

"Okay." She hangs up.

He keeps on clutching the phone.

.

.

.

They watch the awards show sitting on his sofa because they did not bother attending any. They have a domestic relationship, the kind where they pop a bottle of old scotch and watch his ex dance with her current lover, watch her ex hit on his ex. Just take your pick already, and read it in fancy Freud.

Katrina shifts next to him, lets her finger trace the brim of the crystal glass. "She looks good with Ranveer."

"Yeah," he swallows the scotch down in one big gulp, sets the glass down on the table with much unnecessary force. "She does."

The dance song changes to one from Ram Leela and he has this urge to break something for _no _apparent reason.

Katrina laughs. "He is funny."

"Yeah," he reaches out for the scotch again, "if a classless, c-grade attempt at humour is your thing, maybe."

He feels her eyes on him, looks up. "What?"

"Nothing." She looks away, doesn't laugh again.

.

.

.

"What will you do if you wake up as Ranveer Singh?" Karan asks.

Somewhere in the dark recess of his mind he pictures waking up next to her, conjures an image of her with tousled hair and swollen lips. Maybe if he had bothered to stay with her till morning back then, he wouldn't have had to conjure it at all.

"I'd probably shake off that dandruff." He mimes Ranveer' patent move from Ram Leela, knows he is hitting below the belt but it doesn't mean anything. Really.

.

.

.

He calls her at the most ungodly of hours, drunk.

"At this hour," she answers, like she always does, voice dry as a bone, "really?"

"Why am I disturbing your boyfriend? " he slurs because he knows the part, has played it before. "Is he sleeping next to you?"

"Don't even go there." Her voice is rushed like she is trying to keep herself from losing a part of her sanity, like she is trying to get _this _- whatever _this_ is - over with before he can even begin.

"Sometimes I wonder." He says and then stops because he is too busy listening closely for the slight hitch of her breath, the pause in between her words to form some of his own.

"Ranbir," And his name sounds different on her tongue than he remembers, it has more iron in it than it used to, more weariness in it than it used to. She doesn't get to make him feellike this. She doesn't get to make him _feel_. "I don't have the time for this."

Something in his chest hurts.

"I wonder if he fucks you good?" He asks instead, raw and crude and miserable but only because he has never known how to be anything but that. "Puts his mouth on all the places I have before?" He knows her enough to know she must have clenched her eyes shut by now. "Says all the pretty words you have always so desperately wanted to hear when he is inside you?" Tried to block him out.

"Don't call me again." Her breath catches something of an inflection, it a half-ripped sob that she tries to lose amidst all of her forced bravado. "Don't you dare fucking call me again.

He hears her soft cries slip past the receiver before she disconnects the call and suddenly feels angry at himself.

He had wanted it to mean something.

.

.

.

The truth is she has always been a better actress than he has been an actor, and hey, what do you know. _It might as well have been love._

.

.

.

**fin**


End file.
